Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In a famous essay, David Hume located the Republic of Letters in the domain of the conversible, that is, in the space of sociability, conversation, and the observation of common life. The present volume explores the discourse and the practice of sociability in preRevolutionary France from an interdisciplinary standpoint, at the intersection of cultural history, philosophy, and literary criticism. The essays cover issues as diverse as the interaction between the ethical domain of manners and the esthetic domain of literature in the ancien regime; the role of civility in the construction of national identity; sociability's influence in the redefinition of genres and of gender; aristocratic selfrepresentation and the emancipation of the esthetic.
Contents
Elena Russo Editor's Preface: Text and Sociability from the Classical Age to the Enlightenment
Alain Viala Les Signes Galantes: A Historical Reevaluation of Galanterie
Lawrence Klein The Figure of France: The Politics of Sociability in England, 16601715
Pierre Force SelfLove, Identification, and the Origin of Political Economy
Daniel Gordon The City and the Plague in the Age of Enlightenment
Anne Vila Beyond Sympathy: Vapors, Melancholia, and the Pathologies of Sensibility in Tissot and Rousseau
Fran oise Jaou n Civility and the Novel: De Pure's La Pr tieuse ou le myst re des ruelles
Elena Russo The Self, Real and Imaginary: Social Sentiment in Marivaux and Hume
Suzanne Rodin Pucci The Spectator Surfaces: Tableau and Tabloid in Marivaux's Spectateur fran ais
MarieH l ne Huet Social Entropy
Elizabeth MacArthur Between the Republic of Virtue and the Republic of Letters: MarieJeanne Roland Practices Rousseau